Jerry Hartfield speaks from a visiting area Dec. 11 at the Hughes Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice outside Gatesville. / Michael Graczyk/AP

Written by

Michael Graczyk

Associated Press

ABOUT THE CRIME

Jerry Hartfield was 21 in June 1977 when he was convicted of murdering 55-year-old Eunice Lowe, a bus station ticketing agent who was beaten with a pickax and robbed. Her car and nearly $3,000 were stolen. Lowe’s daughter found her body in a storeroom at the station. • At the time, Hartfield, had been working on the construction of a nuclear power plant near Bay City, Texas, which is about 100 miles southwest of Houston. He was arrested within days in Wichita, Kan., and while being returned to Texas, he made a confession to officers that he calls “a bogus statement they had written against me.” That alleged confession was among the key evidence used to convict Hartfield, along with an unused bus ticket found at the crime scene that had his fingerprints on it and testimony from witnesses who said he had talked about needing $3,000. • Robert Scardino, who was the lead trial attorney, said he tried using an insanity defense for Hartfield and that psychiatrists called by the defense described Hartfield as “as crazy a human being as there was.” • Jurors deliberated for 31/2 hours before convicting Hartfield of murder and an additional 20 minutes to decide he should die, Scardino said.

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GATESVILLE, TEXAS — Jerry Hartfield was still a young man when an uncle visited him in prison to tell him that his murder conviction had been overturned and he would get a new trial.

Not long afterward, he was moved off death row.

“A sergeant told me to pack my stuff and I wouldn’t return. I’ve been waiting ever since for that new trial,” Hartfield, now 56, said during a recent interview at the prison near Gatesville where he’s serving life for the 1976 robbery and killing of a Bay City bus station worker. He says he’s innocent.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Hartfield’s murder conviction in 1980 because it found a potential juror improperly was dismissed for expressing reservations about the death penalty. The state tried twice but failed to get the court to re-examine that ruling, and on March 15, 1983 — 11 days after the court’s second rejection — then-Gov. Mark White commuted Hartfield’s sentence to life in prison.

At that point, with Hartfield off death row and back in the general prison population, the case became dormant.

“Nothing got filed. They had me thinking my case was on appeal for 27 years,” said Hartfield, who is described in court documents as an illiterate fifth-grade dropout with an IQ of 51.

A federal judge in Houston recently ruled that Hartfield’s conviction and sentence ceased to exist when the appeals court overturned them — meaning there was no sentence for White to commute. But Hartfield isn’t likely to go free or be retried soon because the state has challenged a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision favorable to Hartfield, arguing he missed a one-year window in which to appeal aspects of his case.